Sunday, August 25, 2013

The usually sensible Scott Lemieux over at Lawyers, Guns and
Money took on a heroic task for himself today: reviewing an album he’s neverheard. Actually, it's more than that: Lemieux is attacking a review of an album
he’s never heard, and giving the reasons for why that review – of an album he’s
never heard, remember – is not just wrong-headed, but downright corrupt.

The album in question is Dylan’s Another Self Portrait, and
the review is David Fricke’s rave in Rolling Stone, which calls the record "one of the most important, coherent and
fulfilling Bob Dylan albums ever released.” Lemieux thinks that record must perforce be terrible, because Self-Portrait was
terrible (hilariously invoking Greil Marcus' contemporaneous outraged pan, as if
a review then must be more correct than a review now), and this is mostly a compilation of outtakes from the Self-Portrait era, although it also includes the New Morning era.

Hey, I like Self-Portrait. The cover of “Let It
Be Me” features some of Dylan’s tenderest singing (backed by astonishingly good
Nashville pros), and the live version of “The Mighty Quinn,” recorded with the
Band at the Isle of Wight, is, to my mind, one of the greatest things Dylan
ever did. Other people like “Copper Kettle” or the cover of “The Boxer”
(which Lemieux himself admits to liking).

Everyone seems to agree that there’s good stuff
on Self-Portrait, mixed among way to much chaff. Fricke himself, in this
review, describes the original album as “tough going.” If Another Self-Portrait
manages to find more of the quality stuff while ignoring the types of songs
nobody likes, it’s possible it could be a good record. I don’t know - I haven’t heard it! After all, it’s not
like Dylan hasn’t left great material off albums before; Lemieux cites “Blind
Willie McTell,” but there’s also “Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar,” “Abandoned
Love,” “I’ll Keep It With Mine,” etc. If he left stuff that good off albums he
cared about, it’s highly plausible that he left good stuff off the haphazardly
assembled Self-Portrait.

None of that is very interesting, though, and I
wouldn’t bring it up if Lemieux hadn’t gone further and accused David Fricke of
being dishonest in writing this review. I was fortunate enough to work with
David for several years, and I along with everyone who worked alongside him saw
him as the consummate professional. Musicians feel the same way; artists
ranging from Thom Yorke to Warren Zevon (although I guess that’s just Y to Z)
have agreed to sit for interviews with Rolling Stone only if David Fricke got
the assignment. People don’t command that kind of respect if their opinions are
for sale.

Ah, but Lemieux points out that a decade or so
ago, Rolling Stone published an over-the-top five-star review of a Mick Jagger
solo album, and that therefore this review must be similarly corrupt. Lemeixu
has no way of knowing this, but that was a very different situation. Jagger
wanted very much to be on the cover when his solo record came out, and Jann
Wenner had enough sense to turn that down, but also ended up feeling guilty
enough about it that he wanted to do something to compensate his longtime friend. (While Jann
undoubtedly has tremendous respect for Dylan – who doesn’t? – they are not
friends, not in the way he and Jagger are.)

And Wenner has no doubt paid the price for that.
At this point, pretty much all anyone remembers about Mick Jagger’s solo career
is that Rolling Stone published an embarrassing review of one of his albums.
And also, there are people like Scott Lemieux who now think every review published in
Rolling Stone is dishonest.

But you won’t find David Fricke’s name anywhere
near that Jagger review, and it’s an insult to say that based on that episode,
Fricke’s work must be suspect as well. Fricke may be right about Another
Self-Portrait, and he may be wrong – I don’t know, because I haven’t heard the
record! – but I am 100 percent certain that his opinion was come by honestly.
He evinced similar enthusiasm for Tell Tale Signs, Dylan’s collection of
outtakes from his late-career renaissance, excitedly writing about how you could
trace the decisions Dylan was making in his singing as the takes progressed. I
guess Lemieux would say that review was bought and sold as well.

On the other hand, Christmas in the Heart got
only three stars in Rolling Stone, and Together Through Life four stars. I
guess Jann felt it was better to butter up Dylan with inflated reviews of his
outtakes rather than of his current material. The review that Lemeiux sees as
so obviously corrupt awards Another Self-Portrait four and a half stars, while
the reader consensus on the RS Web site awards it four stars; that extra half star must be the one that really matters to the Dylan camp.

Or maybe David Fricke just liked the record. Maybe
it really is that good – I don’t know! I haven’t heard it! Since I haven’t, I’ll
take the word of a highly respected rock critic who has listened carefully to
the album over that of someone who hasn’t heard it (and can’t even be bothered
to spell Fricke’s name correctly in his attack). Someone comes off looking
pretty bad in this exchange, and it isn’t David Fricke.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

For you kiddies too young to remember, "The McLaughlin Group" –
an unrehearsed program of news and opinions – was pretty much all we had back
in the 1980s as far as political shoutmatches go. CNN was in its infancy, blogs
and the Internet weren’t even that far, but every Sunday morning, we could tune
in to four journalists and a sybaritic priest* arguing over the issues of the
day.

John McLaughlin had been a Jesuit priest and unofficial
advisor to the Nixon administration before being defrocked and turning to TV,
roughly in that order. He was joined each weekend on his PBS chatfest by the rumpled,
cynical Baltimore columnist Jack Germond, who served basically as the group’s
Tip O’Neill, an old-fashioned big-city liberal. He was joined by some
combination of Eleanor Clift as Pat Schroeder, Fred Barnes as Trent Lott,
Morton Kondracke as Sam Nunn, and Pat Buchanan as Pat Buchanan. (They’d also
occasionally flatter someone like Mortimer Zuckerman – whose journalism
experience consisted of owning U.S. News and World Report – by treating them as
if anyone cared about their opinions.)

Issue Two: Does the World Need Another Teddy White?

Germond, along with his partner Jules Witcover, wrote
quadrennial doorstops on the presidential elections. I was unfortunate enough
to buy and read “Blue Smoke and Mirrors,” their book on the 1988 campaign. Not
only was the Bush-Dukakis race one of the dullest elections in American
history, but they had to misfortune to be outclassed that cycle by one of the
best election books ever, Robert Ben Cramer’s “What It Takes.” I would quote
you something from “Blue Smoke and Mirrors,” but I left it in a box labeled
FREE BOOKS long ago.

Issue Three: A Stinking Pile of Crap

The genius of "The McLaughlin Group" was that it was the first
show to recognize that politics could be fun, especially if it was largely substance-free.
No one made any pretense that anyone was being enlightened by it. In an Esquire
article on the show, Eleanor Clift called it “the Super Bowl of bullshit.”
McLaughlin generally acted like such a buffoon that he was eventually lampooned
by Dana Carvey on “Saturday Night Live.”

Fred Barnes may have kidded himself that he was making a
serious case for something or other, but Germond never fell for that. He made
no bones about the fact that he was doing the show for the money. Once his daughter
finished medical school, Germond quit the show. He sent John McLaughlin a fax
reading simply, “Bye-bye.”

Predictions:

It would be nice if Germond would be remembered for one of
his campaign books, or for his charmingly titled memoir "Fat Man in a Middle
Seat," but heck, I haven’t even read that. He’ll be remembered as someone who
held the banner for old-fashioned liberalism in a period of Reaganism and New
Democrats, and as someone who made politics fun. Let’s hope he’s not remembered
as someone who paved the way for the likes of "George" and "Politico."